


Sunlight Glinting Off a Blade

by pollinia



Category: All For the Game - Nora Sakavic
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-10-28
Updated: 2016-10-28
Packaged: 2018-08-27 11:56:09
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,580
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8400772
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/pollinia/pseuds/pollinia
Summary: For crazy-like-a-f0x for the AFTG exchange. I hope you like it! <3





	

**Author's Note:**

> For crazy-like-a-f0x for the AFTG exchange. I hope you like it! <3

Jean Moreau first saw Jeremy Knox play on the screen at a Ravens strategy session. Knox may have lacked the surgical precision that Jean was used to, but he made up for it with grace, a body that moved like water.

Jean tracked him across the screen, a halo of gold all around him. Jean felt like he was drowning in all of that goddamn sunlight.

He couldn't look away.

Afterward, Riko fractured his cheekbone, knocked out one of his canines, and Jean Moreau didn't let his eyes stray again.

***

Jean is used to being shadowed. He is used to having a partner, a Raven on his shoulder at all times.

What he’s not used to is Jeremy Knox’s toothy grin. The way his eyelids droop shut when he takes a drink of coffee in the morning. The way his chest swells when he takes a deep breath of autumn air.

Jean isn’t used to the idea that life can be a series of moments.

***

With the Trojans, there's "team" everything.

“Team breakfast.” “Team practice.” “Team bonding.”

But it's not like it was at Edgar Allen.

Because there's “Team Movie Night,” too. There’s “Team Soup Kitchen because It’s the Right Thing to Do.” “Team Yoga because It's Hilarious.” “Team Bake Cookies for Coach.”

“Team Make Jean Smile.”

That one is Jean's least favorite.

***

Jeremy Knox pulls open a small pocket knife to cut into an apple after practice, and Jean’s heart is a thrashing thing faster than sun can glint off a blade.

Breath leaves his chest all together. He thinks he might collapse into himself, a galaxy imploding.

He doesn’t see it happen, but Jeremy is at his side, a hand hovering over Jean’s shoulder. Not touching; only offering.

The knife disappeared somewhere after Jean’s vision went black. He never sees Jeremy use it again.

***

When he was eight, his mother took him to the bank of the Seine. She made him kneel and look at his wavering reflection in the water.

Then she pressed a cold palm to the back of his neck and held his head beneath the surface.

He was drowning, but he kept his eyes open. Even with the panic rushing his chest, he knew this was nothing. This was nothing compared to the bruises, the broken bones. The weeks spent locked inside his mother’s sprawling Parisian home, hungry. The men his mother brought home—he would take death before he revisited those memories.

When he was half-past gasping, his vision gone half-black, his mother released him and she rose.

"Do you see?" she asked. "If you fail, the Moriyamas will sink you to the bottom and you won't come back up."

***

Alvarez is a mystery. Her girlish grin can turn wolfs-teeth in half a second. She touches him—claps him on the back, gives him high fives. Once she hops on Laila‘s shoulders to ruffle his hair.

She’s nothing like soft, quiet Renee Walker. The gentle way she had urged him, not quite like fear but something close, a hesitance.

Alvarez, he thinks, isn’t afraid of anything. Not even a monster like Jean. But that can’t be right.

Maybe just doesn’t understand women.

***

There’s something about lounging with Jeremy Knox in their dorm room after practice. Jeremy’s hair is damp from the shower, and Jeremy’s head swims with the smell of his shampoo. All rosemary and mint. He’s taken to sitting too close to Jean on the couch, the heat radiating off his body like the sun itself. Jean tries to sit still, frozen.

That’s a more difficult goal once Jeremy starts lounging around without a shirt. Jeremy memorizes the ceiling tiles.

***

Back in the Nest, sometimes Jean would catch Kevin's stare settle for just a heartbeat too long on Jeremy Knox's televised form, and he would flush so hot with something he couldn't name.

Jean wanted to scour it off but he wouldn't know where to start.

***

They’re in the dorm room, studying, when Jeremy lets out a deep sigh and closes his book.

“I’d like to kiss you,” he says, “but I don’t want to freak you out.”

Once, when Jean was small, before the Ravens, his mother had sent him away to an all-boys boarding school. At recess, he was playing _La Marelle_ , and his best friend reached out to hold his hand in a way that was completely unnecessary to the counting game.

His heart had kicked him like a horse. His skin had prickled with a thousand goosebumps. And the only thing he could think to do was shove his friend cruelly to the ground and run away.

This felt like that.

***

Kevin Day had been a little shit from the time they were both eight years old and Jean passed his test and became a Raven. Became _Number Three._

Watching him, Jean would bounce from jealousy to loneliness to ugly longing.

But they worked well together and that was all that mattered. That Jean worked well.

The Trojans threw him off. They’d ask about his favorite movie. If he was a cat person or a dog person. If he liked pineapple on pizza.

The first time Jeremy asked how he was feeling, Jean answered, “I can play.”

He couldn’t name the look that flitted over Jeremy’s face, but he knew he didn’t like it.

***

They’re alone in the locker room when Jean says, “Okay.”

He answers Jeremy’s questioning look with a sigh.

“Okay,” he repeats, “I want you to kiss me.”

Jeremy’s smile is the most naked thing he’s ever seen.

***

Jean starts to count kisses like he counts goals. Like breaths. Like sixteen-hour days blending into each other without end.

There are roughly one hundred and thirty-two freckles dusted over Jeremy’s face.

Jeremy’s sneezes come in sets of four.

There are about five hundred thirty-two steps between the stadium and the dorm.

Jeremy can eat an apple in eight to twelve bites, depending on the intensity of practice.

He used to bring only one apple but now he brings two.

Jean has eaten three apples so far this week.

***

They’re lounging on the couch with Jeremy’s feet in Jean’s lap.

Jeremy says, “You make me want to be a better person.”

Jean has no fucking idea what that means, but Jeremy smiles when he says it, so at least everything is normal. Normal and familiar and right.

***

They’re up against Palmetto State in the quarterfinals and Jean shakes and shakes, but Jeremy is steady.

He says, “You’re stronger than what you were made to do.”

Jean manages to nod. He doesn’t flinch when Day walks on the field, and then Josten. He doesn’t flinch, but in his head he repeats, _Je suis désolé. Je suis désolé._

***

It’s usually Team-everything but sometimes Jeremy spends time with him alone.

Jean drinks his first pumpkin spice latte. _An American rite of passage_ , Jeremy assures him and laughs when Jean gets whipped cream on the tip of his nose. He rubs it off with the back of his hand, which Jeremy promptly snags and kisses gently, no trace of fluff left in his wake.

Jeremy takes him to see the new Star Wars movie— _Space, dude_ , he says, gesturing widely with his arms. Jean doesn’t know what that means. But they sit with their shoulders pushed together and about five minutes from the end, Jeremy hooks their pinkies together. Aside from kissing and exy, it’s the most they’ve touched each other.

They go to the butterfly house together and sit for hours. Jean watches these beautiful, delicate, resilient things in their warm greenhouse, a bounty of blossoms laid out for them like the most sensuous feast and thinks, _Chrysalis. Rebirth. Transformation._ Thinks, _Yes._ Thinks, _Yes._

***

Jeremy watches him pack and Jean can’t quite make himself look up. A year is a lifetime. A year is a second.

“Pittsburgh is lucky as hell to have you, man,” Jeremy says, “they’ll take good care of you.” 

And there’s that gold again. There’s that drowning.

“San Antonio for you,” Jean manages finally, his voice gravel and he nods his head at Jeremy.

“Yeah,” Jeremy agrees, sinking down onto the edge of Jean’s bed, “I’m glad I was drafted somewhere warm.”

They don’t talk about the distance between their teams, but Jean knows.

It’s fifteen hundred miles from Pennsylvania to Texas.

A full day by car, if you don’t stop.

Two days by bus.

Twenty days if he crawled on his knees but he’d do it and leave a bloody trail all the way across the country.

Jean shakes his head. That’s the kind of talk he’s been trying to stop. The team shrink would get that sad look on her face if she knew.

“I like the cold,” he says, folding a sweater and placing it into his suitcase.

“I know,” Jeremy answers.

***

Jean’s half asleep when his phone buzzes in his hand.

He looks around the Pittsburgh team bus to make sure he hasn’t disturbed his teammates. Gonzales nods at him sleepily from the across the aisle but turns promptly back to his own phone. Jean likes the rest of his team. He didn’t expect that.

 _Go get ‘em :)_ , is the text from Jeremy, followed quickly by, _Oh jeez sorry. You’re probably sleeping. Thinking of you Jean._

Jean smiles and it makes his face hurt. He thumbs his phone dark again. He leans his head against the window and watches the nighttime terrain pass by, the yellow glow of the streetlights glinting. Warm.


End file.
